FOR many of us who have taken part in the now 24 major marches for Palestine in London, there has been one consistent, calming figure at the head of them. One steady voice of assurance, advocating peace. If provoked by zionists or police, don’t retaliate. Remember this is a march of love. No matter the incitement, remain peaceful.

And it worked. There have been few, if any, incidents of unrest at any of the rallies in London or at the countless others across the country. A lot of that credit goes to our chief steward, Chris Nineham, one of the founders of the Stop the War Coalition.

It was a supreme irony, therefore, not to mention an outrage, to see footage of him being violently wrestled to the ground and arrested for trying to facilitate a consummately peaceful act, the laying of flowers to remember the Gaza dead. Justifying Nineham’s arrest, the police claimed protesters tried to force their way through a police line.

“There was a co-ordinated effort led by the protest organisers to march out of Whitehall in a clear breach of conditions,” claimed a Met statement. “An investigation into those offences has been launched.”

But the effort that was co-ordinated, as countless video evidence from organisers and protesters shows, was an attempt by the police to sow confusion and disorder by abruptly changing routes and throwing up unexpected police barricades.

There were 77 arrests, including Nineham. Later, Ben Jamal, the head of another lead organising group, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, also found himself facing charges.

If any of this feels premeditated, it may come as no surprise to learn that just one day after the march, Mark Rowley, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, was feted at a plenary meeting of the pro-Israel Board of Deputies of British Jews (BDBJ).

“We were able to thank the commissioner for the consummate professionalism shown by the police yesterday with regard to attempts to march in close vicinity to a central London synagogue,” said a statement from the group.

The BDBJ has been at the forefront of trying to get pro-Palestine marches banned altogether and, according to Middle East Eye, was behind the effort “to ban the pro-Palestine march’s original route.”

Rowley also admitted that the police had effected an unprecedented clampdown on protesters last Saturday. “We’ve used conditions on the protests more than we ever have done before in terms of times, constraints, routes,” he said at the meeting.

Addressing those conditions, Jamal observed that “Saturday provided the clearest examples of the willingness of Keir Starmer’s government to use them to suppress the Palestine solidarity movement, and the core freedoms of all of us.”

The sense that the police may have deliberately planned to upend the march and sow chaos was further compounded by the eyewitness accounts from Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL), a group that regularly participates in the march as part of the Jewish Bloc for Palestine.

“From the moment demonstrators began arriving in the pre-arranged Whitehall assembly area before noon, police imposed what appeared to be deliberately provocative conditions that shifted from minute to minute,” JVL said.

“Arrival routes were blocked and then randomly opened, some protesters were allowed through, others were challenged and directed down side streets, including on occasions into the area reserved for a small crowd of abusive, right-wing pro-Israel counter-demonstrators.”

None of this reflected anything close to “consummate professionalism,” as Jewish marchers, “including elderly and infirm, Holocaust survivors and descendants, were ordered to move away from the pre-advertised assembly point or face arrest, and then allowed to remain.”

The pretext for the route rearrangement was a trumped-up fear that a nearby synagogue could be threatened, a premise that is without foundation based on every prior pro-Palestine march during which no Jewish institutions or their members have been threatened. And, as Jewish Bloc marcher Julia Bard pointed out, it’s not even an accurate reflection of Jewish tradition.

“If the synagogue (that most people didn’t know existed prior to this) had needed to be protected (which it didn’t), half a dozen officers could have closed off the short street where it’s situated and diverted people away from it,” she wrote. She further noted: “Those of us brought up in traditional Jewish households can vouch for the fact that no-one is in synagogue at that time on a Saturday.”

JVL, among many others who were there on Saturday, concluded that the police actions they witnessed, and the subsequent detentions and charges, mark an ominous shift toward silencing pro-Palestinian protesters and potentially others altogether. “Political dissent is now under threat in Britain,” JVL said.

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland.